The present invention relates to the field of electronic communications.
A wide variety of software systems exist to allow geographically-separated people to collectively participate in a single online event like a meeting. Software systems that allow a presentation to be shared with or presented to an audience are commonly used for sales and educational activities. In a conventional electronic presentation system, once the source file of the presentation is loaded, changes to the source file must be made outside of the presentation system. That is, the presenter needs to interrupt the presentation to close the source file, make the changes using an editing application, reopen the file in the presentation system, and then return to the previous point in the presentation.
This process for updating the content of a live presentation using a conventional presentation system not only disrupts the flow of the presentation, but is also cumbersome and often embarrassing to the presenter. Essentially, the presenter or other appropriate users are unable to update the content of a live presentation using a conventional presentation system.
Other software systems like an online collaboration system have the capability to allow real-time and simultaneous modification of a file. However, in an online collaboration session, all the members of the collaboration have the ability to edit the content of the source file or file being collaborated upon; granting the entire audience the ability to make modifications to the content of the presentation is an undesirable feature for a presentation. Further, an online collaboration system does not typically support the functionality desired for conducting a presentation.